250' water line: got some questions

[FTG-05]

I'm getting ready to install a ~250' water line on my SC TN property and have some questions.

- I plan to use 20' 1" PVC sticks; which direction should the bell go? Or does it matter?

- I want to bury a locating cable/wire with the pipe so the pipe can be found later. What cable/wire do I use?

- Frost depth maps for my area show somewhere between 5" and 10". If you were doing this job, how deep would by bury the pipe?

Anything else I may have missed?

Thanks,

 

[woody]

I'm getting ready to install a ~250' water line on my SC TN property and have some questions.

- I plan to use 20' 1" PVC sticks; which direction should the bell go? Or does it matter?

- I want to bury a locating cable/wire with the pipe so the pipe can be found later. What cable/wire do I use?

- Frost depth maps for my area show somewhere between 5" and 10". If you were doing this job, how deep would by bury the pipe?

Anything else I may have missed?

Thanks,

I have about 1600 feet of water line here in central Alabama and this is what I did.
I put the bell up stream towards the meter and used 1" sch 40
for my run I put in 4 isolation valves for troubleshooting and it also helps find the line by looking from one valve box to the other and I also put some metal cans in the trench, not right on the pipe.
I think mine is about a foot deep so 10 to 12 inches sounds good to me.

 

[chim]

Our water line is about 100 yards long. I opted for 1" black poly line. One piece with no joints was appealing. Allow the pipe to acclimate after backfilling before making the connections. An excavator bud told me he had a long black poly line they connected before backfilling. The roll of tubing had been in the sun and got heated up. When they backfilled, it contracted enough to rip both ends loose.

 

[Creamer]

Why not use black polyethylene with no connections to get stressed and come loose? that is what is used up here.

I know you guys don't have to worry about freezing but I would be worried about it if it wasn't 24" deep just for damage from re-landscaping, gardening, a heavy truck driving over it, etc.

Any wire will work. Go with a cheap 16-18-20 gage wire. No use burying more money than necessary.

 

[EddieWalker]

Black poly pipe fails more then any other and is not allowed in a lot of Water Districts. If you want to go with a continuous line, use PEX. It comes in 300 foot rolls.

For such a short run, going with Schedule 40 with the belled ends is fine. Be sure to use purple primer and heavy duty clear cement. Only use this, NOTHING ELSE!!!!

Locator line can be any wire. I use 18 gauge copper wire taped to the pipe.

For depth, I like 2 feet most of the time. If I think that I will ever need to run another line of any kind across it, I'd go deeper. I wouldn't want it any less then two feet.

Are you using a trencher for digging the trench? It is very important to have a flat bottom. If the pipe does not rest evenly on the bottom of the trench, you will have pockets of uneven fill, which will lead to excessive movement. Movement in the ground is why pipes fail.

 

[flusher]

I'm getting ready to install a ~250' water line on my SC TN property and have some questions.

- I plan to use 20' 1" PVC sticks; which direction should the bell go? Or does it matter?

- I want to bury a locating cable/wire with the pipe so the pipe can be found later. What cable/wire do I use?

- Frost depth maps for my area show somewhere between 5" and 10". If you were doing this job, how deep would by bury the pipe?

Anything else I may have missed?

Thanks,

House water line is about 200 ft long. Installed July 2005
1-1/4 inch schedule 40 PVC pipe, joints facing downstream
No frost problem in the North Sacramento Valley (Tehama County)
Trench: 18" deep
3" sand in bottom of trench
#6 insulated copper wire in the trench on top of the pipe, free ends above ground at both ends of the trench
Detectable magnetic marking tape in the trench laid on top of the pipe
Handful of steel nuts/bolts in the trench at the bend locations (there are 3 bends in the pipeline)
PVC pipe covered with 3" sand then soil backfill

Hint: use 18" long wooden marker stakes laid perpendicular to the trench to support the pipe above the trench while gluing the joints.

Good luck

 

[SPYDERLK]

Black poly pipe fails more then any other and is not allowed in a lot of Water Districts. If you want to go with a continuous line, use PEX. It comes in 300 foot rolls.

For such a short run, going with Schedule 40 with the belled ends is fine. Be sure to use purple primer and heavy duty clear cement. Only use this, NOTHING ELSE!!!!

Locator line can be any wire. I use 18 gauge copper wire taped to the pipe.

For depth, I like 2 feet most of the time. If I think that I will ever need to run another line of any kind across it, I'd go deeper. I wouldn't want it any less then two feet.

Are you using a trencher for digging the trench? It is very important to have a flat bottom. If the pipe does not rest evenly on the bottom of the trench, you will have pockets of uneven fill, which will lead to excessive movement. Movement in the ground is why pipes fail.

Odd. What is the failure mode of black poly?

 

[bcp]

I always put the belled end on the outside of the non-belled end of the next section. Never failed yet.



Bruce

 

[Sprinklerman]

I do irrigation , I use pvc all the time I install about 4000 ft a month. It doesnt matter which dirrection the bell ends are . Wire doesnt matter , the locator picks up large and small wire . I would go at least 18 inches , the deeper the pipe the less chance it gets cut

 

[LD1]

I question the black pipe having a higher failure rate.

Thats what our Water company Recommends around here...With a SDR-7 to be exact.

Perhaps The black PE pipe that fails is because it was either A. Installed with incorrect joints, or B, someone got pipe that was too thin-walled.

Its funny, start reading up on geothermal installs and the various forums related to that, and the consensus is NO pex in the ground. And most places will void a warranty if anything other than PE pipe is used.

The pe pipe has been used around here for many many decades, feeding houses from wells, then from the city supply when it came through. Never heard of a failure of pipe. Only improper connections. Burying water line in the ground is what the black PE pipe is made for.

As to depth, 12" should be sufficient with only light traffic/lawn mower.

Drive a vehicle over the area, I'd want 18".

Heavy equip...24" is better

 

[EddieWalker]

Odd. What is the failure mode of black poly?

City of Tyler, population around a hundred thousand, used it for their water supply to several thousand houses before realizing it was a problem. They now run a crew 24/7 repairing it. It's under the paved streets everywhere, and it's a nightmare. One house that I owned had it and the line cracked just before the fitting into the meter. While they repaired it, I was told about all their problems with it.

The ground never stops moving. Black Poly can handle it for so long, then it cracks. PVC does better over short runs, depending on the soil. A couple hundred feet shouldn't ever be a problem. A thousand feet and the only thing you can use is gasketed pipe.

Just because you got away with it so far does not mean it's the best pipe to use. Congratulations if you have it and you never have an issue. For me, I'm never going to use it, or recommend it to anybody else.

 

[/pine]

Like most other things...there are different qualities...In my personal experience of over 45 years of using black poly water line...from 1.5" to 3/4"...and literally thousands of feet I've never seen the pipe fail...
My experience has mostly been setting up surface spring water systems...some over 1K' alone...some have been buried and some lay on the surface...I've seen couplings freeze and split but never the black poly...
About 1/3 of the repairs I make to different systems every year is due to squirrels chewing through exposed lines...most of the rest are in the spring replacing cracked PVC fittings that were used to make up connections at the ends of the poly pipe runs

 

[LD1]

Also worth mentioning that the black pe pipe typically has 50yr MFG warranties too.

Perhaps the city of tyler got a bad production run??? But Black PE pipe is used EVERYWHERE for domestic water runs. If it truly were a big problem, I think there would be more out there about it.

 

[gsganzer]

Interesting read.

I'm thinking of running about 300' of line to put a waterer in my back pasture and had figured I'd use black PE to avoid joints. I'm on black clay and I figured it would cause failure of PVC joints with all the movement. I'll have to look into this a little more.

I agree with Eddie about the PVC glue. There are 3 different types, normal, medium and high strength. I only use high strength when I do PVC stuff.

 

[DJ54]

I have 4 runs of ploy pipe here. But, I ran 3/4" 160 psi poly through 1-1/4" ploy as a conduit. It costs a little more at the time, but if a problem ever does occur, disconnect ends, pull the old pipe out, shove a new one through. No digging a new trench, landscaping, etc. to repair a line. The first was put in in 1966, and no problems yet.

 

[grsthegreat]

Here in n idaho only black poly is allowed. Odd how different areas require different pipes. Mine is 20 yo, no leaks. I used only 2" pipe and brass compression fittings.

I just did my annual spring leak test...l. No leaks on either main runs or landscape runs.

Mine is buried 5 feet in ground

 

[mapper]

Odd. What is the failure mode of black poly?

Much of the time it is when 90' pipe is used, this is according to the earth work contractor who worked on our house when we were building it. It tends to crack and pinhole. What they told me was if you can push the barbed fittings in without warming the pipe with a torch then it's not heavy enough. They used 180' pipe to hook up our house to the existing line, which was 90', installed by the previous owner. About a year later it broke out in the middle of our hay field. Long story short we replaced the 1" line with 2" shedule 40 and the 12 ga romex wire with 10 ga DB.

 

[Creamer]

I have never heard of black PE failure. A 2.5 Mile water line that my father had installed 50 years ago has never leaked. In the area around the farm where I grew up they knifed in a complete new rural water line 6' deep and it was all black poly. My brother, who is on the home place, had branches run off to various pastures while they were there to knife it in. that was 15 years ago an no issues thus far.

i had a black poly line from the city main to my house that was about 1/4 mile long and had problems - at each of the plastic barbed fittings after about 40 years. We put in a replacement black poly with brass connectors.

the beauty to black poly is that is flexible enough to take the ground shifting as long as it is deep enough to not get crushed and there is not a sharp rock next to it.

 

[lmgtexas]

My son and I ran about 2,600 feet of 1 and 1/2 inch, Schedule 40 PVC water pipe for our place. We buried it 18" to 24" deep to avoid possible damage. We also installed runs into our four main pastures for water faucets to facilitate easy watering of the cattle at key points. Don't forget to install cut-off valves at strategic spots in your water line runs (Example: Before each pasture run in case the cattle damage a faucet or to cut off water to faucets during freezing weather). Don't forget to inspect all lines and test them for functionality and leaks before covering them up in your trenches. I usually leave the trenches open for a couple of days after I'm certain the lines are not leaking anywhere - just to be sure! Then I carefully fill in the trenches (making sure rocks are not breaking the doggone lines!). Voila!!1

 

[newbury]

Good thread.

Our line from the main is leaking and part will need replacing. I'll be following this thread.

<snip>
Drive a vehicle over the area, I'd want 18".

Heavy equip...24" is better

What's "heavy equipment"? There's on place not to far from the main where (before I bought) some dip was driving some size truck and dropping gravel behind my shops. I think they were planning on expanding the shop.

It's where I've driven my M4700.

I have 4 runs of ploy pipe here. But, I ran 3/4" 160 psi poly through 1-1/4" ploy as a conduit. It costs a little more at the time, but if a problem ever does occur, disconnect ends, pull the old pipe out, shove a new one through. No digging a new trench, landscaping, etc. to repair a line. The first was put in in 1966, and no problems yet.

That's a GREAT IDEA, probably cost an arm and a leg upfront, but great security.